Garth Williams: The Idea of Home

Another slight digression from my usual photographic fare, as promised: a brief survey of my favorite children's illustrator, Garth Williams. Most of these are from Golden Books editions I had as a child.

In addition to my love of his funky architecture, adorable and expressive animals, and vivid imagination, I am fascinated with the old-world comfortableness and safety communicated in all his works, even when dealing with such traditionally scary subjects as bears, dark woods, and old wrinkly people. Perhaps most of all, the concept of Home permeates Brown's and Wlliams' work, and encompasses and handles reassuringly the pre-reader themes of getting along with others, figuring out what you're good at, and getting free of the apron strings (a little, at least).

Williams often worked with Margaret Wise Brown, a writer you typically either love or hate. I fnd her work strangely mesmerizing, if admittedly tending toward the insipid. But I think Williams' sensitive art saves the text from itself.



"Mister Dog," Margaret Wise Brown, Simon & Schuster 1952
Not only does The Boy find a friendly, fun-loving, and resourceful companion, but one who lives in a really cool playhouse.




"The Friendly Book," Margaret Wise Brown, Western Publishing Co. 1954
This book's poetic vignettes afford Williams a great range of panoramic, detailed fantasies.




"The Kitten Who Thought He Was a Mouse," Margaret Wise Brown, Western Publishing Co. 1951
In this moral tale couched in cuteness, a mouse family adopts a lost kitten, until it becomes too big to fit in the mousehole. From the outside, their dwelling looks pretty basic but they've outfitted it with midcentury modernist chairs, which is unusual for Williams, to say nothing of mice.




"Animal Friends," Jan Werner, Simon & Schuster 1953
Another subtly pointed story about a disparate collection of critters who somehow all live in a tiny stump until their varying diets demand that they strike out on their own (for example, the turtle to a swamp, the chick to a chicken coop, and the squirrel...well, see below.



"Animal Friends," Jan Werner, Simon & Schuster 1953



"Little Fur Family," Margaret Wise Brown, Harper Collins 1946
Another remodeled stump!




"Little Fur Family," Margaret Wise Brown, Harper Collins 1946
This decor is a more typical William treatment, sort of pre-industrial, fairytale style.




"The Sleepy Book," Margaret Wise Brown, Western Publishing Co. 1948
This collection of hypnotic, simple, rather wistful poems lulls a child along with the homely and softly drawn pictures.




"Wait Till the Moon Is Full," Margaret Wise Brown, Harper & Brothers 1948
One of my favorites, done in charcoals, concerns a young raccoon who really wants to join the other forest animals but who must wait...wait...



"The Sailor Dog," Margaret Wise Brown, Western Publishing Co. 1953
Before getting shipwrecked, this intrepid and very organized dog lives on a sailboat. Here too Williams' lets loose with wild imaginative scenes of a world populated by exotic dogs.



"Home for a Bunny," Marget Wise Brown, Western Publishing Co. 1961
Another parable of a young animal searching for his place in the world. No, it's not in a tree or in a bog, and though the log seems suitable, the resident groundhog begs to differ.

Sepia Saturday: Idiomatic Architecture in Vintage Children's Books

I'm a voracious and omnivorous reader, and I got my start as a wee lad. My parents read to me and filled my room with books. My favorites were Little Golden Books. Some of these classic books have been reprinted, but not enough of them. I have in recent years prowled used book stores to restore my childhood collection and have added a few titles that I didn't actually have at the time.

One of the most endearing qualities these book had for me (and for perhaps everyone, parents included) was the combination of charming anthropomorphism and wild visual invention, which I find most intriguing in the dwellings that are illustrated in these mostly contemporary tales.

My favorite Tibor Gergely title is The Merry Shipwreck (George Duplaix, 1942), in which an ark full of colorful beasts goes astray ("little mice were sharpening their teeth on the rope that held the barge fast to the pier"). They become shipwrecked, to be rescued by the New York fireboat. In addition to his typical quaint scenes of American life (there are still horses, carts, and jolly colored folks servicing Manhattan) Gergely's attention to both animal details and the allure of living aboard is very appealing -- even in a serious storm. This is one of the books that hooked me on the life aquatic.



Regular readers will enjoy a glimpse of Uncle Wiggily as drawn by Mel Crawford (written by Howard R. Garis). This is from the series from which my father named his automobiles. In this 1953 episode the rabbit gentleman is vexed by rambunctious dog-boys and the Skillery-Skallery Alligator ("'With my rough nutmeg-grater tail I'll saw down the tree...' snarled the bad chap." This was in the days when people actually used (and grated) nutmeg. Wiggily escapes thanks to a timely application of red paint, but never does finish remodeling his bungalow. I love the notion of a stump with rooms inside. As a kid I drew maps and blueprints featuring such abodes, as well as caves and tunnels with food -- and rayguns. Oddly, I only recently discovered a rabbit actually living in a stump near my office...I always thought rabbits simply lived in burrows.



Gustaf Tenggren tended to illustrate classic folk tales like this Grimm Brothers one, The Giant with the Three Golden Hairs (1955). He has a distinct style which I always found rather offputting, but it's evocative of dark woods and distant times. Here our plucky hero stumbles onto a "den of thieves" in the woods. My wife and I spent our honeymoon night in a cabin unfortunately reminiscent of this shack. The thieves turn out to be practical jokers and manage to cause the boy to be married to the princess.



F. Rojankovsky seems to have studied at the same school of stump architecture as Mel Crawford, though he's added a few appropriate traditional German touches in the window shutters to the de rigeur thatch roof. The three bears in this 1948 edition terrified me because of their tiny, intense eyes.



Richard Scarry managed to prolong his career well into the present. He revels in miniscule details, including meticulous, period interior decoration. This book, The Party Pig, (Kathryn and Byron Jackson) was one of my least favorites as a child because it was so sad (happy ending and all that, but getting there was tough). Little Pig barely avoids canceling his birthday. Here we see the rustic exterior of his house. Eventually Scarry's books took place in the world of cars, planes, and TV sets, but in 1954 (my birth year) the focus was still on the early American country life.



The master, however, both in artistic finesse and imaginative originality, was Garth Williams. I'm planning a whole post on him, but here for starters is a romantic cottage from my favorite of his Golden Books, The Sailor Dog (Margaret Wise Brown, 1953). Scuppers gets shipwrecked (a common plight, apparently, amongst boaters) and fashions a cabin Crusoe-style from the wreckage until he can rebuild the boat and go shopping. I love Brown's typical incantatory style: "...he hung his new hat on the hook for his hat and he hung his spyglass on the hook for his spyglass, and his new handkerchief on the hook for his handkerchief, and his pants on the hook for his pants, and his new rope on the hook for his rope, and his new shoes he put under his bunk, and himself he put in his bunk."